Telerik has released an open source version of Kendo UI. The release consists of an open source package of UI and JavaScript tools that also includes Telerik Kendo UI Mobile.

The open source version is called Telerik Kendo UI Core, and Telerik describes it as"a package of free and open industry-leading UI tools and JavaScript framework features, including Telerik Kendo UI Mobile."

The bundle includes 38 UI widgets, including all of Kendo UI Mobile, and all of the core framework features, such as templates, data binding, and input validation.

Telerik says the decision to release an open-source version is “to give back to the developer community for its long-time support for Telerik and its products”. The package is being released under the permissive Apache 2.0 license, so you can use the library in both commercial and non-commercial projects. The software is available via a GitHub repository and Telerik.

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While the open source version includes many widgets, some of the more sophisticated widgets, such as the data grid and data visualization tools, are being retained for the commercial Kendo UI distributions. Discussing this on the Telerik blog John Bristowe, Principal Developer Advocate for Telerik, says:

“Not all Kendo UI widgets are created equal. Some widgets - like the Grid, Scheduler, and Editor - are so feature-rich that they're more solutions than widgets. As such, they consume a great deal of engineering effort to build and maintain. To ensure that critical widgets like these continue to get the proper attention and focus they deserve from our engineering team, we’ve decided to offer these only with Kendo UI Professional (formerly Kendo UI Complete).”

The decision to make the product open source was described by Telerik as being an attempt to build a community and to get more developers interested in Kendo UI. Brandon Satrom, director of product management for Telerik, says that the company concluded from a lot of customers that people were buying Kendo UI for the more sophisticated options such as grids and schedulers, but not using it for the more everyday options. By letting more developers use the product at the entry level, the company hopes those developers will then pay for the Professional version for features like line of business and enterprise development tools.